Loeb Music Library Lands Scholar of Note

August 19, 1999

SEARCH THE GAZETTE

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

By Alvin Powell
Contributing Writer

Virginia Danielson, librarian, the Loeb Music Library. Photo by Kris Snibbe

Virginia Danielson has performed on the piano, she’s taught madrigals to junior high school boys, and spent years working at Harvard’s music libraries.

Though Danielson’s musical background is broadly based, it has been flavored with Middle Eastern spices.

Danielson, recently appointed the Richard F. French Librarian of the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, conducted research in the Middle East for several years, developing an expertise in Arabic and Middle Eastern music, and writing the 1997 biography, The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song and Modern Egyptian Society.

"Her work is challenging and highly original. She’s written a landmark biography of one of the leading Middle Eastern musicians and one of the first biographies of a Middle Eastern woman musician," said Professor of Music Kay Shelemay, past Music Department chair who has known Danielson since she was a graduate student at the University of Illinois.

Danielson began learning languages so she could study other countries’ music. After beginning Arabic, though, she knew the Middle East would be her focus.
"That language was so hard, there was no turning back," Danielson said, joking.

Once she visited the Middle East, she returned several times, including a trip as a Fulbright Fellow during which she met her husband, a Fulbright Fellow named James Toth.

In the early 1980s, Toth — today an anthropology professor at the American University of Cairo — was named director of an international development organization, a post that moved the couple to Al-Minya, a city of 500,000 about four hours south of Cairo.

That post brought Danielson out of Cairo’s world of professional musicians and into small-town and rural Egypt.

"It’s a very different lifestyle," Danielson said. "It’s less consumerist — that’s the most striking thing. You live in a place where owning every last thing on the market is not the highest priority."

Danielson came to Harvard as a cataloging assistant at Widener Library in 1987, after three years in Al-Minya. In 1991, she was named keeper of the Isham Memorial Library, a special collection of rare books, microforms, and manuscripts within the Loeb Music Library. She was named curator of the Archive of World Music in 1994. She was named the Loeb librarian last April.

"I am delighted at her appointment at the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library," said Music Professor Thomas Kelly, Music Department chair. "I have no doubt that she will continue the traditions of her distinguished predecessors and will continue to improve a library that is relied on at Harvard and around the world."

Energetic and Intelligent
Danielson grew up in a Milwaukee suburb with music in her blood. Both parents were amateur musicians, singers in local church choirs, semiprofessional theater, and radio.

Danielson began playing the piano when she was very young and performed locally as a teen. She went to Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., interested in a career as a pianist. She received her bachelor’s degree in 1971, spent several years teaching junior high school music, and then, while considering graduate school, had a revelation about her future as a performer.

"I discussed it with a professor who said, ‘Ginny, you don’t like to practice,’ " Danielson said. "And that’s true. When you think of performing, you don’t think of the hours and hours of practice. That’s what [musicians] do."

Ethnomusicology was a natural for her. She had already become interested in the musical tastes of different people, an interest first piqued as a junior high school instructor when she realized that not everyone listens to the classical music she heard at home while she was growing up.

"I became interested in what people do listen to," Danielson said.

Danielson received her master’s degree in music in 1979 and doctorate in 1991, both from the University of Illinois, where her work ranged from the study of manuscripts to the analysis of oral tradition. She also got her start as a librarian there. She worked as an archivist in the university’s Ethnomusicology Archives in 1976 and as a cataloging assistant at the university’s Music Library in 1983.

Shelemay described Danielson as "energetic and extraordinarily intelligent," adept at administration and with a "wonderful appreciation of different musical traditions."

"She always has a sense of humor. She looks at things carefully, but doesn’t take herself too seriously," Shelemay said.

It was those personal and professional qualities that landed Danielson the job as head of the Loeb Music Library last spring.

"The University, and especially the College Library, will benefit from the many facets of her experience," said Nancy Cline, the Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College. "Her experience with libraries and relationships with faculty, students, and reseachers will be of considerable value in shaping the collections and services that support diverse academic programs."

As Loeb librarian, Danielson will certainly get a chance to put her skills to work. Challenges she sees ahead include continuing to expand the Library’s historical collections as well as furthering its expansion into jazz, ethnomusicology, and popular music.

But getting the materials is just the first step. Making them accessible is another challenge, she said. Some of the collection is being made available digitally, requiring Danielson to deal not only with the technological side of making digital recordings available, but also with legal issues surrounding copyright protection in the computer age.

"I’m spending a significant amount of time speaking to computer programmers — not to mention lawyers — on building and maintaining a digital collection," Danielson said.

Danielson is also beginning to tackle a side effect of the library’s acquisition policy: storage.

For the first time, Danielson said, some duplicates of w orks in the collection are being stored at the Harvard Depository. The future challenge will be deciding what material stays at the Library and what will be stored off-site.

Luckily, in addition to Danielson’s love of music, she also has a knack for administration. That her work is administering music makes it all the better.

"I like organizing institutions and materials, and bringing money and people together in a way that accomplishes things," Danielson said.